24. Monita's Tortilla Factory
Monita's Tortilla Factory, facing Port and Lew Williams. You could smell this place mile away when the wind was right. Just smelled 'homey' though, made you hungry. They made a lot of tortillas here and could be found in many Corpus Christi stores like HEB, Kroger, Beils.You could walk up the stairs to inside and buy directly, didn't have to be wholesaler, the heavy set Mexican ladies always greeted us neighborhood rug rats with a smile. I never bought anything as my grandmother used to make us a boatload of tortillas from scratch, so many she would give them to neighbors. So no tortilla shortage at our house.
The smell inside the building was only surpassed by the nice ladies and employees here. Not sure if still around, or moved on. Monita Tortilla Factory had a LOT of 'modern' tortilla making equipment for it's day, but still a lot of ladies worked in this area bagging up flour and corn tortillas to ship out. I don't think Monita used the train tracks behind them for shipping, was all trucks. On one side was Carl Kuhen's Paint & Body, other side Zarsky Lumber Company. So on Port 1/2 block north of Lipan. But if you went up Port up the hill, around the bend, and over Agnes street another tortilla factory was there called La Malinche with its cool looking indian lady neon out front. The local rag did a story about that place, but not Monita. So here it is. Flour or corn, whihc do you prefer?